AT&T lays out SIP peering architecture – and works it out

IIT VoIP Conference and Expo 2010, Chicago-burbs – AT&T (www.att.com) has gone public with its architecture and plans (including business plans) for its SIP peering architecture. While a company spokesperson wouldn’t discuss how far along the company was in discussions with other Tier 1 carriers, HD Voice News believes AT&T is much further along than PowerPoint presentations and has connected one or more service providers in quiet trials.

AT&T’s Sumitra Sinha gave a detailed presentation of AT&T’s strategy, what the company sees for SIP traffic exchange applications (i.e. how to make money), differences between SIP peering and traditional IP peering, guidelines for SIP traffic , the company’s embrace of ENUM, business opportunities, and challenges for implementation.

Sinha would not go into detail about which Tier 1 carriers it was in discussion with, but said “everyone is on the same page” when it came to the necessity of SIP peering.

Last month Cincinnati Bell said “major carriers” had been engaged in discussions on SIP interconnect while officials at Metaswitch also indicated “major carriers” had been discussing SIP interop for HD voice and video.

Through another source, HD Voice News has been lead to believe that AT&T is doing more than internal talk and may have quietly begun trials of SIP interconnects already.